Oscar’s dad, Don, called every number in his cell phone, trying to find out what happened to his kid, starting at about 2am. Eventually raininglight7 calls me since Don’s called him a dozen times, and after changing his voicemail message to something cryptic, gets a voicemail sounding really freaked out. We together call him an tell him where his kid is. The only way to describe his reaction is Not Pleased. I’ve never had a less useful conversation with someone.

We pick Oscar up at the bus station about 3:30. He’s dead tired already from not sleeping the night before he left, and not sleeping much on the bus. We talk, we hug, and try to be gentle. We pick up some groceries and a couple items we needed, got lunch at Pancheros (A little fast-food mexicanish place in Montrose, that other than the sterile atmosphere, is awesome.) Oscar is an amazing person. Charles Beckner, the less helpful of our two police officers shows up at our house about 8pm, and in no uncertain terms tels Oscar to go home. It’s so very obvious that Charles doesn’t want to deal with things more than he wants to help. He calls Oscar’s father, tells him he’s at the house with his daughter[sic] I can hear Don yelling through the phone at Oscar the moment Charles calls him and hands the phone to Oscar. It’s an unpleasant and frustrating thing to watch, having him try to reply calmly as he can to things, and getting yelled at more and more.

Oscar calls the National Runaway Hotline. They’re a pretty nice organization, and they have a few useful things to say. It’s a long conversation, though, and there’s nothing really conclusive. We’re freaking out a little, not knowing how things are going to play out. We’ve got the sense from Charles that as long as there’s no runaway report issued, nothing’s going to happen with the police, but at this point, we don’t know if Don is going to press that big red button, or Jennifer, Oscar’s mom (who we hear has talked to Don — something new for her in recent history), or what.

We talk. We try to chill out. We try to sleep. Some parts work better than others.

Woke up at 3:30, and I can’t get back to sleep. I’m excited and nervous and I’m not sure what all else

Oscar’s on a bus, out of california! We finally get the house clean. I swear, sometimes, that the only time our house gets thoroughly clean all at once is when someone’s coming.

Tomorrow, another transboy is moving in with Bailey and I. We’ve made a sort of standing offer for the spot on our floor, and this kid got kicked out by his dad.

We’ll see how it goes. I’m excited, nervous and hopeful.

We heard today through our friend who is actually talking directly to ovideater that he’s going to try to come out here to find safe space. We research the laws to stay clear of kidnapping charges and various other legal snafus. Colorado is thankfully sane: as long as you tell the parents where their kid is, or tell law enforcement, you’re pretty well in the clear here. You could still be held responsible for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, especially if the kid gets out of hand while living with you, but I think you’d have to be pretty antagonistic with the authorities to make that happen.

Bailey and I spent a bit of the day cleaning. It’s nice to have an excuse to tidy the house that last little bit.

baileyjordan and I heard that ovideater got kicked out, or at least had a very scary fight with his dad, where ultimatums came out. It sounds pretty bad. We’ve had a standing offer that if someone needs a place, they’re welcome to come out here, and have a place to sleep and enough to eat.

What if autoconf could be replaced by moving the configuration steps into makefiles, rather than vice-versa?

File paths and library lists can already be handled nicely with systems like pkg-config, with the only requirement that the pkg-config tool be in the path.

Why not move feature-detection and other configure sort of tasks into makefiles too?

A library of makefile pieces could be built that represent various autoconf tests, stored in a central directory like /usr/share/pkgconfig, ready for inclusion into GNUmakefiles. Rules might look like this:

include $(shell pkg-config gnuconf-make --variable=MAKEFILE)

all:	check-configuration


PKGCONFIG_PACKAGES=gtk2 atk lua-5.0.0

check-configuration: check-c-compiler check-cpp check-ld my-custom-check check-pkgconfig-packages


my-custom-check:

	do something here to check some part of the build

I’ve got a friend, and have had many more in the past who’ve been on SSRI and SNRI drugs like Prozac and Effexor, and had bad to horrible withdrawal syndromes.

These drugs increase availability of serotonin (and norepinephrine in SNRIs) in the brain by limiting the reuptake of the chemicals by the receptors. The drugs tend to create a dependance (though how bad varies from user to user pretty drastically), and discontinuation can cause some very serious side effects. There’s a ton of ongoing controversy about how the drug companies mislead consumers about the safety of the drugs, and adding to that that patients are often not able to get enough of a physician’s time for a conversation about possible side-effects, especially in low-income situations, and additionally when mental health issues — the very problem the drugs are to treat — are present, getting adequate support and information to make a decision is very hard.

The science of prescribing the right amount to treat a “chemical imbalance”-caused depression is nearly voodoo, since the tests to determine correct levels would involve measuring neurotransmitter levels, which would essentially involve a central nervous system biopsy. That’s not possible on a regular basis for any patient, and so diagnosis is by symptom only. The drug companies advertise a theme of “correcting chemical imbalances” so heavily that I’ve seen a lot of people leap to the conclusion that they have one, without any evidence.

In particular to the research at hand, one friend is having a very hard time discontinuing a drug because of the withdrawal syndrome. She suffers from it to the point where she has partial seizures. I’m researching ways to wean off the drugs, but it’s hard. XR versions are time-release, and the pills are not divisible because it breaks the time-release mechanisms.

As far as I’ve read, the primary reason for the withdrawal is a relatively sudden drop in the level of serotonin in the brain. I’m wondering about and looking for information on dietary supplementation of tryptophan (which is converted into serotonin in the body). Foods I’ve found so far that might help include turkey, black eyed peas, walnuts, eggs¹, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, almonds, dairy products (especially cheddar and and swiss-style cheeses), and to a lesser extent grains.

I’d love to hear more from people who’ve had success weaning themselves off of SSRI and SNRI antidepressants when it was difficult. Was diet a factor? What else did you do?

¹ I suppose that might be why I saw a relatively large positive effect on my mental health when I started eating eggs again. Other than correcting the complete lack of saturated fats and cholesterols in my diet.

Just do it. Surprisingly yum.

I just got back from the hot springs. It’s the first rain of the spring tonight, coming down gently and mostly in tiny drops, tiny pinpricks of cold. Sitting half in water that’s hot to the touch. I could feel the drink I had earlier leaving through my pores, my skin waking up and my whole body relaxing into the water.

It’s cathartic, putting my whole body in alignment with my mind. I just feel whole right now.

I’m eating a Ritter Sport bar and thinking of lightwalker

We were shopping at Target today, and I’m checking out next to , and the checker looks up at us and says “Hello, guys”, then glances at my chest, shakes her head, and says “Oh, er,… well, … hello.. .guys”

It was amusing.

It’s just been the week for small injuries for me. After stabbing myself with a screw driver yesterday, today I tore out of the driveway on my bike like I usually do, cold cranking it in low gear to get over the rough ground.

What I didn’t anticipate is that yesterday, I took the exact path I did today. It was solid, a little loose rock on top, but nothing unexpected. Today, I hit it doing 15 miles per hour, and instead of the rough but ridable I had yesterday, it had thawed underneath and formed a six inch deep pool of rock, perfect for stopping me dead in the three foot space it occupied. I went head over handlebars and landed tits up on the ground, wincing a little as my bike fell back down and flopped over.

Note to self: Mother earth is a bitch. Don’t let her get the upper hand next time.

I just picked up a Nikon D70 from a friend. It’s really nice to be working with a camera and lenses that have apertures somewhat more varied than my Fuji S5200’s 4-8, and a bigger sensor to boot. The Nikon sensor is just slightly grainier at ISO 800 than the Fuji is at ISO 100. Apertures as wide as 1.8 on the 50mm lens I’m using are fun!